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My eyes drop to the X on the map, and I feel like a dick.
“I’d rather this not become public yet because I’m afraid of copycats,” he says. “I’ll never understand it, but any time we publicize vandalism on public lands, there’s a rash of copycats.”
We’re both quiet for a long moment, and I breathe, listen, and discover that I’m already getting used to it.
“You said they were cut down by axes?” I ask, looking at the maps again.
“The trees in Slickrock Draft were,” he says, leaning forward and handing me a third map. “The trunks were thinner.”
“You mean less girthy?”
I don’t know why I said that. Girthy. Girthy. Girthy. Send help.
“Yes,” he says, matter-of-factly. “In Otter Mountain, they seem to have used a combination of an axe and a manual saw. And in Hickory Trap it was a chainsaw.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, grabbing the map of Hickory Trap again. I’ve used a chainsaw before. Those things are heavy, and from the looks of it, Girthy Glenda was quite a hike from the nearest road.
“Pretty sure,” he says. “I have a passing familiarity with what a felled tree looks like.”
Point taken.
“So someone hauled a chainsaw all the way into a wilderness area to commit some vandalism?” I ask, trying to put the pieces together, because this just doesn’t fit.
Levi sighs.
“I don’t have another explanation,” he says. “They don’t seem to have taken anything. They don’t seem to have left anything, they just cut down some old-growth trees.”
There’s a long pause. The candles flicker, and I look at the X’s on the map.
“June, I’m at a loss,” he says. “I want to catch whoever did this. I want to stop them from doing it again. I don’t even know that they haven’t. They could have cut down innumerable trees in deep wilderness, and we may not ever know.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I wish I could help.”
“Thanks,” he says simply, then rises from the couch. “I’m going to call the power company again.”
As he walks away, I pull out my phone and check the time.
Holy cow, it’s nine-thirty. I could have sworn I’d been here for thirty minutes, maybe an hour, but I guess I was wrong.
“All right, thank you very much,” Levi says in the kitchen, and then I hear the click of a phone returned to the cradle, footsteps coming back. They pause.
“It looks as if you may be spending the night here,” Levi says. “They haven’t gotten this far out yet. Sounds as if there was some major damage closer to town and they’re still working on that.”
I am spending the night with Levi Loveless.
“Oh,” I say, and the buzz in my chest becomes a full-scale rattle. “Is that okay?”
My thoughts are whirring, crashing into each other, frantic.
Maybe he’s only got one bedroom, I think. And only one bed, and for some reason only one blanket and you know it gets very cold at night, so you’ll have to snuggle together for warmth, his arms around you, warm and solid…
Ridiculous. Levi obviously has more than one blanket.
“Of course,” he says.
“I don’t want to impose,” I go on. “If you’d rather just drive me back to my car, that’s fine, or…”
I stop, because I’m not really sure where I’m going with that sentence, and I can tell from the look on Levi’s face that there’s no point in finishing it.
“You’re not sincerely suggesting that I’m going to take you back to your electrified car so you can spend the night in it rather than here,” he says.
“Not when you put it that way,” I admit.
“Good,” he says. “You can take my bedroom, I’ll set up a cot in the office.”
A wave of sudden anxiety washes over me. I can’t sleep in his bed, in his bedroom. I cannot.
“I’ll take the cot, it’s your bed,” I say.
He says nothing, just smiles and walks past me, toward the stairs.
“Levi,” I call after him. “No. Come on. I can’t just sleep in your bed while you—”
And he’s gone.When he comes back down, I argue some more, but I get nowhere. Levi just smiles behind his beard and asks if I’d like to call my parents so they don’t worry.
I do. They’re very relieved to learn that I’m in good hands.
We have peanut butter sandwiches for candlelight dinner. Afterward, he hands me a brand-new, still-in-the-package toothbrush, and I thank him.
I don’t want to compare Levi to my exes. Frankly, it’s unfair, and double-frankly, I’m tired of thinking about them.
But suffice it to say that none of them were adult enough to have extra toothbrushes. I’m fairly sure that more than one used the same toothbrush for years on end.
I protest the sleeping arrangements again. I tell Levi how much I love sleeping on camping cots, but in the end, Levi steps into his study, calls the dog, says goodnight, and shuts the door.
